In illustrating and elucidating the complex role Japanese historians like Kuroita Katsumi played in the formative decades of imperial Japanese domination in East and Southeast Asia in the 1930s and 1940s, Lisa Yoshikawa's Making History Matter fills in the lacunae in modern global scholarship regarding Japan's domestic standpoint and foreign policy in the early twentieth-century cultural, economic, and political world. Yoshikawa's work offers a contrasting view amidst the ever-present postwar views within Japan that range from the state's indifference towards wartime exploits to its nationalist tendencies that tend to tolerate unmistakable glorifications of war and militarism. Outside Japan, quite a number of Japanese academicians and historians since the end of the Second World War, as exemplified by English translations of Saburō Ienaga's antimilitarist bookFootnote ¹ and his protests against state-sponsored textbooks, have indeed presented remarkably critical perspectives that only a few in the English-speaking world have convincingly accomplished without unintentionally trampling on the intricate historical and cultural aspects of Japanese society – as successfully demonstrated by authors like Carol Gluck in her holistic historical analysis of the war, Harry Harootunian in his modernist historiography, and Herbert Bix in his bold scrutiny of imperiality.Footnote ² Regarding the role of the intelligentsia, James B. Crowley in the 1970s was among the earliest to attempt to qualify Japanese intellectuals as “bona fide” or individuals who neither could have been chauvinists nor fascists, but were more inclined to be responsible individuals and informed critics who mostly yearned to excel in no more than their academic professions.Footnote ³ John Brownlee, who like Yoshikawa analyzed the substantial position of Japanese historians in society, interpreted Kuroita as “a man of two minds” who equally produced both pure scholarly works and political writings that reflect statist and illiberal views.Footnote ⁴ Yoshikawa, who provides a copious account of the so-called Japanese experience, is often silent on Kuroita's political agenda and instead empowers the readers to render obvious interpretations by themselves. As stated by Yoshikawa, “I hope to help the [historical] field confront its past as it actually was, and to provide a perspective of modern historiography outside the dominant European and American models.”Footnote ⁵ This inward-looking historiographical perspective is what makes Making History Matter a standout among contemporary works on not only the century-defining War, but also Japan's Meiji and Showa legacies through exemplary individuals such as Kuroita and via the Japanese academic field of history. There is much to learn in Yoshikawa's historiographical method and writing style. She reminds us that through his major publications – particularly an anthology of primary material resources on Japanese history published in the early 1900s, the collection of essays Kokutai Shinron (New Theses on National Essence) in 1925, and the Kokushi no Kenkyū (Study of Japanese History), which he has published, revised, and expanded several times since it first came out in 1908 – that Kuroita not only exemplified but more so pioneered the typical early 1900s Japanese academic and political discourses such as emperor-centric historicism, imperial loyalism, Japanese exceptionalism, regional expansionism (belligerent and otherwise), Oriental culture guardianism, and an ideological nationalism based on imperial myths and genealogy, all of which contributed to the political system that set the country's Showa foreign policy. Indeed, these themes, which also appeared in Kuroita's other forms of public engagements (e.g., lectures, commemorative celebrations, travel book publications, historical textbook publications, and academic research tours) supported much of the state's official lines and historical perspective, especially during intensified expansionism, the interwar years, and regional conflicts (fifteen-year war and Pacific war). The fact remains, as Yoshikawa points out, that an academic polarization between state-sanctioned history and liberal ideological views that rivaled Kuroita's, existed throughout his illustrious career, thus illustrating the vitality and dynamism of the Japanese historical field during its emergence and growth. But be that as it may, Yoshikawa's accounts certainly hold true, given Kuroita's overarching stake in the social sciences and state policies even after he became inactive at the end of 1936 due to bad health. His influence lingered on through former students who have since held important posts in both private and government agencies, while his important writings are up to the present being published, read, and referred to. Despite such seemingly immense influence, Kuroita would otherwise have been remembered simply as cop-out scholar, if not blind militarist historian, had Yoshikawa failed in the effort to describe him in a very humanized way, from his humble beginnings as a student of humanities and history to him being known as the “pickle professor” for eating Japanese pickles during his research travels abroad. Most importantly, the book brings to the fore historians like Kuroita who would have otherwise been relegated to a minor role in Showa and Meiji history outside Japan. This thus extends Kuroita's influence to a possible reexamination of authoritative English-language books on Japanese history, particularly those by George Sansom and more recently by L. M. Cullen, W. Scott Morton, and J. Kenneth Olenik.Footnote ⁶ The book can also be utilized to create a reappraisal of a more ideological understanding of Japanese history, from those that tackle the idea of “Japanese uniqueness,” such as by Peter N. Dale, to progressive accounts such as Curtis Anderson Gayle.Footnote ⁷ The book is thus especially recommended reading for students of history and everyone interested in Showa and wartime intellectual and political history.

Despite the very positive aspects of the book, Making History Matter does have its own minor downsides. As earlier mentioned, Yoshikawa is often quite confident in trusting the readers’ informed judgement on matters of history, but certain details that are beyond the norm or outside the status quo are sometimes best analyzed and catered to the public by historians. For example, I would have wanted to know Yoshikawa's insights regarding Kuroita's views on foreign influences, particularly during the Taishō reforms when he identified Prince Shōtoku Taishi as the appropriate historical model figure. Also, the book in some respects tends to view all too simply the complex regional history by linking (consciously or otherwise) Kuroita to almost all major regional and national conundrums, which might actually be the case but is precarious nonetheless. Having said that, Kuroita can indeed be considered today as a true pioneer historian who admittedly practiced selective historiography through what he appositely referred to as “applied history.”